Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @02:11PM
from the who-has-time-for-caring-these-days dept.

kthreadd writes "Luis Villa has an interesting discussion on the topic of not licensing at all, what he calls POSS or Post Open Source Software. With a flood of new hackers flocking to places like GitHub which doesn't impose any particular requirements for hosted projects, the future of Open Source may very well be diminishing. Skip licensing, just commit to GitHub. What legal ramifications will this have on the free and open source community going forward?"
From the article: "If some 'no license' sharing is a quiet rejection of the permission culture, the lawyer’s solution (make everyone use a license, for their own good!) starts to look bad. This is because once an author has used a standard license, their immediate interests are protected – but the political content of not choosing a license is lost. Or to put it another way: if license authors get their wish, and everyone uses a license for all content, then, to the casual observer, it looks like everyone accepts the permission culture. This could make it harder to change that culture — to change the defaults — in the long run. So how might we preserve the content of the political speech against the permission culture, while also allowing for use in that same, actually-existing permission culture?"

younger devs today are about POSS – Post open source software. fuck the license and governance, just commit to github. - James Governor (@monkchips) September 17, 2012

Ah, yes, eloquently stated. And, you know, it's totally okay to do that but let's assume that you've "fucked" the license and governance and your code is great and popular. Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys? What forces them to give back their changes that might make that code better? What did you and the community gain by contributing to that company's revenue? What if I just took your code and put it on a CD and started selling it with no credit to you and no link or reference to the source code? Wouldn't that rub you the wrong way? Just a little? Well, what if that company then claimed that your code was an unlicensed version of their code and moved to have it remove?

And that's why we have open source licenses. So those are out there and if you're lazy or whatever you can just download this file [gnu.org] (or the corresponding OSS license you like) and put it in the root directory of your source tree. Are you really too lazy to include a simple txt file in your source tree? At the possible expense of your $MOST_HATED_COMPANY turning the screws on you?

This article seems to focus on just the "hey browski, I heard you liked code, here's my code" hippy hacker mentality and grievously ignores the "did Facebook just use an altered version of my library to track its mobile users?" possibilities.

To follow the analogy started by the twitter post: OSS licenses are like a condoms. Stop being lazy and just use one.

Really? They can't just... ASK? The only code on github which you can't ask permission to use is code written by dead people, and then its relatively safe as they aren't going to be suing you anytime in the near future.

How am I supposed to know if the author of some code somewhere on them intarwebs is still alive? How am I supposed to contact them to ask permission? Why is this better than them having stated clearly what their intent was? Such a statement would be called "a license". A three paragraph BSD license, just to pick one, would have stated that for everyone, for all time -- and be clear for all the lawyers exactly what was intended. By not using a license, you've guaranteed that your code will rot in obscur

If anyone decides to assert ownership, properly or otherwise, everyone without a valid counterclaim of ownership using the code without the newly-blessed "owner" will have difficulty defending themselves.

Sorry. You can't wish away intellectual property any more than you can abolish handguns or nukes. If you claim not to play the game, that just means you automatically lose when the game comes to play you.

Then I would countersue. Public domain does not allow a company to assert ownership of the work, only their derivative works. If they are willing to commit fraud, then a license isn't going to stop them.

,em>To follow the analogy started by the twitter post: OSS licenses are like a condoms. Stop being lazy and just use one.

I had a similar conversation a while back. Quite a few people use github for things like config files (and SSH keys apparently). It's basically personal use and so noone takes the time to license them.

There's also lazyness (for bigger thing) and ignorance, too.

did Facebook just use an altered version of my library to track its mobile users?"

Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys?

Their legal department. Without a more permissive license, they're stuck with default copyright terms (no copying except for narrow "fair use" exceptions) so they can't distribute it. Ethical companies wont touch it, unethical ones would have no qualms about pirating BSD/MIT/GPL/whatever licensed code anyway, and the hackers and hippies don't care about licenses will use it and carry on not caring about licenses.

Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys?

Their legal department. Without a more permissive license, they're stuck with default copyright terms (no copying except for narrow "fair use" exceptions) so they can't distribute it. Ethical companies wont touch it, unethical ones would have no qualms about pirating BSD/MIT/GPL/whatever licensed code anyway, and the hackers and hippies don't care about licenses will use it and carry on not caring about licenses.

Sorry I should have been more clear. What you're talking about is the permission culture (you need permission to use our code). I was making the argument under the assumption that by committing unlicensed code not everyone needs permission to use it. From the article:

In other words, those people choose not to use a license because, on some level, they reject the permission culture and want to go back to the pre-1976 defaults. In this case, publishing without a license is in some way a political statement – “not every use should need permission”.

Therefore my discussion was formed using the pre-1976 defaults. Which the article also covered:

In the US, prior to the 1976 Copyright Act, you had to take affirmative steps to get a protectable copyright. In other words, you could publish something and expect others to be able to legally reuse it, without slapping a license on it first.

So yeah you're right the current premise is post 1976 Copyright Act but I was talking about what it would be like without using an OSS license an

Pre-1976 it simply wasn't illegal to be rude. The 'change of default' you refer to is to make it clear that just because I didn't say you couldn't use it doesn't mean its okay for you to use it because you happen to come across it. The change was made to prevent things from being co-opted by snakes.

The change occurred for the same idiotic reason the original rubbish about 'pushing back against a permissions culture', idiotic people tw

Of course, we may be willing to pay you for a license, but I think it would still slow the adoption of your project significantly.

Well, if the person distributed his code without a license specifically to screw the "permission culture", then he'd be a rather glaring hypocrite if he accepted your offer of payment for a license to use his code. He couldn't ethically accept your money. And you, according to legal ethics, couldn't use it.

So yes, that would slow the adoption of the project considerably. Or expose a hypocrite.

You will never eliminate the "permission culture", simply because too many people make their livings and support

Forget the legal department of the company you work for. Individuals are not going to touch it either. Without a license to use the code, you have no rights. You have no assurance that you won't get sued. Your company's legal department is just making the same decision that any self-interested individual would make.

younger devs today are about POSS – Post open source software. fuck the license and governance, just commit to github. - James Governor (@monkchips) September 17, 2012

Ah, yes, eloquently stated. And, you know, it's totally okay to do that but let's assume that you've "fucked" the license and governance and your code is great and popular. Now, what stops a company from taking your code

Copyright law.

And that's why we have open source licenses. So those are out there and if you're lazy or whatever you can just download this file [gnu.org] (or the corresponding OSS license you like) and put it in the root directory of your source tree. Are you really too lazy to include a simple txt file in your source tree?

Yes some people are too lazy for that. And that's because more people are writing software and putting it up for other people to look at. Which is great!

You are free to copy that software down for your own use if someone uploaded it to github. The only problem you have is redistribution. Just ask the author if he or she would be happy with you re-using the code under a BSD/GPL license. Usually if they don't care about uploading a LICENSE file, they are happy with anyone using it. With their ag

It's more accurate to state that practical considerations make enforcement actions against your own personal usage unlikely. If you are quietly using someone's stuff at home, no one is going to know you are "stealing" from them.

The minute you start re-distributing stuff, you become visible. Any interested party can examine what you are doing and determine if you are "stealing" from them.

> If you are only making software for your own use, that's a non-issue.

First, Newsflash: The vast majority of persons making software are making it for other people to use.

Nevertheless, that statement is wrong. It IS very much an issue. I don't necessarily want to study your code and then re-implement it. If it works, and is suitable to my purposes, and you are making it available for my use, then I want to just plug it into my project and use it. If I have no license from you, then I have no

that's the FUCKING POINT! the company is free to do it for mad moneys - at least they can try!

"do what fucking ever" license is the best. also it's the only license that allows you to give the code away and not have to care sh** about what people do with it. and you know, if you had it on github before the company then that's just what the github release is for.. for acting as proof that you did it already - as publication, working as prior art. I don't see how gpl'ing protects you from a company lying abou

I've released open source on the internet without a license. It was a choice, not laziness.

Which by law means that you have refused to give anyone permission to use the code. That is not "open source". The law says that I must have the author's permission to copy copyrighted material. The law also says that everything is by default under copyright when it is created. So, since you did not grant anyone permission to copy and distribute your code, no one can legally do so.

And just to add, as a commercial ISV why would I ever in a million years either donate code/work to your code base when I have no reason to believe I'm even allowed to use it or that it will continue to be available to me in the future, or that my competitors won't just skeef that code and use it to beat me in the market. Anyone who thinks "POSS" means jack seems full of it to me. If you can't be bothered to find a license you can live with and expect the rest of us to just hope we won't be screwed or walke

Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys? What forces them to give back their changes that might make that code better?

Nothing stops them, and I'm happy with that.

I've had friends in entirely different companies tell me that they saw a "(c) Lucian Wischik" header in some of their company's codebase, which had used some of my public domain work from 10 years ago. I've seen popular iphone email software with certain email-rendering bugs that I recognize from another one of my old public-domain code snippets.

My past work has helped people, and I'm delighted about that. I also do random acts of kindness. Despite being well paid

You're what if's are based on something these younger devs don't care about. You care about a political movement and forcing others to behave in a way you see fit. They don't. If you don't want to give back, they don't care.

They also don't tend to have this silly 'using my code without giving me your changes is stealing from me!$!@$!@%' silliness going on either.

The irony is that these 'younger devs' you talk about are the very ones trying to force people to an agenda.

If you're actually sharing, not pretending to share, then use an appropriate open source license. Pick something like BSD. Very short. Says exactly what you want. And assures everyone, and for all time, including after your death, of exactly what you meant.

The other things you said seemed to assume that you are thinking only of the GPL license which does force you to give back. There are ot

Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys?

Or equally likely, taking your code, change a few dates, tweak it just barely enough and post it as theirs own licensed code and demand you stop posting their copyrighted (copylefted) code, and pay license fees.

The reason people open source license their code it to prevent others from claiming your creation as their own invention and copyrighting it as their own and extracting fees from others.

Even stuff you no longer wish to maintain has value, and adding SOME FORM of a license protects those users to whic

Now, what stops a company from taking your code and making massive changes to it and shipping that code for mad moneys? What forces them to give back their changes that might make that code better?

Nothing. Giving stuff away for free means you don't expect anything in return. Not all forms of FLOSS are GPL-like.

What did you and the community gain by contributing to that company's revenue? What if I just took your code and put it on a CD and started selling it with no credit to you and no link or reference to the source code? Wouldn't that rub you the wrong way? Just a little?

Some people just don't care about all that. All they care about is creating a good software for people to use. Period.

Well, what if that company then claimed that your code was an unlicensed version of their code and moved to have it remove?

The same can ocurr if the code had a BSD banner on top of it - a license doesn't keep companies from making up lies.

but not to lazy to write a slashdot article.The reason there is the GPL and other copyleft is to prevent abuses by large entities that don't like to share code. The problem is there are a whole mess of copylefts, some are not compatible with eachother, and prevent code merging.

There is always BSD, MIT, and even further, public domain.

The worst option of all is using no license at all, because it adds a great deal of ambiguity to the terms, and people in other semi-large projects, and institutions that re-us

The problem is that the legal framework defaults to all rights reserved unless you explicitly grant rights.

Not in most places, it doesn't. By uploading it to a site where the normal result is for uploaded code to be available via a public viewer, you are giving your implicit consent for people to view it that way, just like anyone visiting any other web site. That implicit consent would probably stand up in court just about anywhere.

IMHO, the interesting legal question with regard to uploading specifically to a code-sharing site like GitHub and implicit consents is whether you might also be deemed to be giving s

A good analogy would be a bookshare table at the local library with each book having a stickynote of rules inside the cover, where putting a book on the table without said note is analogous to putting your code on github without a license.

Imho this situation reminds me of how one of my professors described communication, he said "You can not not communicate". I think the same thing applies here; the very fact you're using a website, one where there is simply no reasonably conceivable way to not know the ent

Not in most places, it doesn't. By uploading it to a site where the normal result is for uploaded code to be available via a public viewer, you are giving your implicit consent for people to view it that way, just like anyone visiting any other web site.

Unfortunately, in most legal jurisdictions, things are copyrighted out of the gate, and can only become more open with an explicit act.

If you upload code to a web site, it's publicly available, but that doesn't mean public domain. And many code samples I se

If you didn't include a license then those others had no legal right to use it whatsoever. Even looking at it in the public viewer is questionable.

The problem is that the legal framework defaults to all rights reserved unless you explicitly grant rights.

In that case, I'd say the article is about a problem that isn't really a problem at all. If someone wanted to use your code in a business environment it'd be in their best interest to get in touch with you and license it.

The point that the author is making is that there should be some sort of option to allow you to specify this - "do whatever the hell you want, stop asking me if you can use it, I don't care."

He's making the point because, as he notes, a significant portion of the code on GitHub doesn't specify a license, which means it defaults to "all rights reserved," even though that's clearly not the intent of at least some portion of the "no-license" authors there.

You can also call it by it's narcissistic name: sloth, don't-give-a-shit, don't bother me with trifles and crap I don't understand, and so forth.

Public domain may not be the default status of a published work, at least in the USA. This means that code is essentially untouchable in its whole form. Without a declaration, the originator owns it, IMHO.

Public domain may not be the default status of a published work, at least in the USA.

Not may not, it is not. Copyright is automatic. The terms of use you assign, either by agreeing to a ToS or an explicit license, are largely separate.

This means that code is essentially untouchable in its whole form. Without a declaration, the originator owns it, IMHO.

That's not just your opinion, that's how it is. You own your work unless you've assigned ownership to someone else, or done as work for hire, under contract, etc. That's licensed or not. You continue to "own" your work, even if you eventually license it permissively. That means you can do a fork of your own work that's completely closed too, if you like, so lo

Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorshipimmediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rightsthrough the author can rightfully claim copyright.In the case of works made for hire, the employer and notthe employee is considered to be the author. Section 101 ofthe copyright law defines a âoework made for hireâ as [...]

Infringement occurs, if he owns it, and you use it. Therefore, it's nothing but a coder's masturbation to post such things-- without a stated license or intent. I'm not a thief, and likely, you aren't either. But you can't use that code unless you 1) want to take your chances or 2) want your code to be forever of dubious source.

Make up your own license. Use CC, copyleft, whatever. But otherwise, you're just spewing your ego, not making a contribution to anything, because its ownership is tenuous. This is th

It's yours as originator, unless others use it as an example, not to copy it, UNLESS YOU TELL THEM IT'S OK. That advice to them, CC, CopyLeft, etc., allows them to use it. Without that, you can sue them for infringement.

I'm happy to post stuff and give it away and I do so often.
But I feel the need to protect myself... so I formally disclaim liability, promises of support, etc. I also feel the need to protect myself against someone taking my code and then claiming it's theirs and telling me I can't use it any longer. Don't think that doesn't happen.
Unfortunately everyone doesn't play nice, so I think there will continue to be a need for licenses, even if they are very generous ones.

Yes you can do anything you want with your source. I don't care what you do with your source.

If, however, you publish it, you still own the copyright,which you acknowlege. I can view your material and go, gee, interesting, eh?

I cannot scrape it and use it, becauseYOU still have the copyright, and all rights reserved by the copyright, one of which is DON'T COPY THE THE STUFF. Just publishing it on a screen grants NOTHING. If I use the code under the circumstances you describe, you can successfully sue me, be

And the WTFPL is one of the first ones he brings up in his "fixing the problem" section of TFA, and CC+modifications is the second.

His point is that people "rejecting the permission culture" should do so explicitly, by licensing their software in such a way that explicitly states their rejection. Omitting a license, as he notes (and other people who haven't RTFA have also pointed out here) defaults copyright to "all rights reserved," and so creates a legal minefield, which limits the ability of people to r

Yup. I have been calling the BSD license "glorified public domain" for years.

This really does come off like some kid with no experience thinking that he re-invented the wheel. "Do what you want" licenses already exist. There's also a reason that copyleft exists and it's not just to "stick it to the man".

That guy already tried the "do what you want" approach and got burned. His contributors screamed bloody murder when some commercial entity exploited their work.

The BSD license is fundamentally differet from public domain, because stuff can be removed from the public domain. The event which caused RMS to go off the rails, invent the GPL, and become the advocate he is today was just that. There was a neat, public domain, text-based unix game called "empire". A game company started selling a very simplified version of this game, and then started sueing anyone who distributed the public domain version (or perhaps further changes to that) for violating their copyrig

"do whatever the hell you want, stop asking me if you can use it, I don't care."

Those words constitute a license. And they are sufficient to keep future user A from suing future user B.If that's what you want, by all means use it, with your name and a date attached.Saying nothing at all just sets a trap for future users.

Yes, and the entire point of TFA is pointing out that the people on Github (and similar sites) who are electing not to specify a license, are setting this trap when that is obviously not their intent. Their intent is, as the twitter quote suggests, "I don't care about licensing, do whatever you want with this," but they are not *stating that* in the code, and thus are, legally, retaining all copyrights to their code.

Posting as AC its clear you don't intend to assert these rights. That's not the issue.Someone else can assert the rights.

They take your code, change it just a tiny bit, and turn around and demand license fees from other users, and perhaps you yourself. (Don't laugh, this has happened). Slap at least some kind of license on your code, if for no other reason than protect people who want to use it in the future. Give them some legal standing to use your code before some other entity asserts their own ownership.

Pick a license, any license [wikipedia.org], but don't send your code naked into the world to be used as a club by others. You aren't doing anyone any favors by releasing with no license whatsoever.

The problem is that if you did not put any license statement of any kind with the code, there is no way for me to know that you intended to release it. I also don't have any protection if stole someone else's code and posted it there. At least if you post a statement saying that you released it to Public Domain, if I use it and someone claims that they wrote it and I am using it without appropriate license, I can point to that statement as part of my defense. It might not be a definitive defense, but it's b

FOSS and "mad moneys" are not mutually exclusive. Look at asterisk, which is open but was made available in large part to sell their PBX hardware. Look at TiVo, who built upon Linux and made money by locking FOSS into a closed cabinet. Look at MySQL, and how it got forked and hijacked and eventually "bought" by Oracle, presumably to reduce the threat to Oracle's database products. And there are thosands of examples of free software that don't include source (see Windows for those).

> but what if you just want to develop something and you don't care about putting the color of license on it
> - it can still be open source developed, and if someone wants to use it in their own way, they can without any problems about it.

Without a license how am I supposed to know that I can use it in my own way? What do you mean without any problems? What if I get sued by you? What assurance do I have that you won't sue me? Why would I want to touch your unlicensed code knowing you might su

Other people have already spent tons of time and effort working out the words. There are a large variety of open source licenses that are well understood. If you just want to let anyone do anything, then there is an open source license that conveys exactly that meaning.

Under US Law, you must have a license in order to exercise any of the rights that are reserved exclusively to the copyright owner. There are licenses for books, so

the open license ecosystem assumes that sharing can’t (or even shouldn’t) happen without explicit permission in the form of licenses.

This is because our legal system makes this assumption. Wishful thinking does not make laws go away. If you release software with no license, then it is legally presumed to have full copyright protection. You need to explicitly give up your rights.

Exactly. There are effective ways to change the law, but ignoring the law isn't one of them. People who ignore licensing issues mainly give the impression that they are lazy, are kids, or don't really know what they are doing.

Also, don't ignore the wisdom embedded in the saying, "Good fences make good neighbors."

that sentence should have the wording "in the form of complex licenses".if one sentence is enough to convey "free to use, no attribution needed" in other words "do whatever". this doesn't actually need complex contracts, though lawyers would probably like you to do one(so they could sell it to you).

though this problem seems to just be that github doesn't have default license.

however.. what about stackoverflow? how many posts have you seen that have a license attached to them. friggin zero. that's how many.

The point of F/OSS licensing is to use copyright and license terms against the commercial software makers who presently hold a very tight and expensive control over business, government and individuals.

It doesn't make anyone "look bad" and even enables them to take from the unlicensed software pool and take it private.

The point of F/OSS is to share your code. For some people that means sharing in such a way as to encourage others to share too, for others it means to share in such a way that as many people as possible can make use of it.

The 'unlicensed' idea ignores the legal system. Using something that is unlicensed is a very bad idea because the default status is full copyright.

The 'unlicensed' idea ignores the legal system. Using something that is unlicensed is a very bad idea because the default status is full copyright.

Which is why anything I release F/OSS is explicitly public domain. I agree that unlicensed or ambiguously licensed is a bad idea. Not that I have all that much to offer, but if you want a copy of my spam filter, it's public domain.

I should have been more detailed in what I said....to use the F/OSS license against commercial software makers who would take from the community and give nothing back.

If I put something useful out there, I wouldn't want Microsoft or Oracle to take advantage of what I wanted to give to the public and have them pervert it in some way... you know, like the way they presently do with public domain and BSD licensed code.

I was about to say, saying "no license" doesn't make it freely available to anyone. It's quite exactly the opposite -- it's not usable by anyone. And it puts a taker in jeopardy since the materials contributed will (or may depending on the contribution) be copyright of the contributor automatically. Github's position for license-less contributions is the default rule.

Of course, someone making code available online may have zero desire to enforce that copyright. However, a subsequent user of that code cann

Perhaps one of our resident "IAAL"s can clarify this, but in the absence of an explicit license, doesn't copyright still apply to a code snippet by default? So rejecting the use of the GPL or other FOSS doesn't mean just any corporate asshat can come along and steal your work - Quite the opposite, it means no one can legally use your code.

Which works out perfectly for the hobbyist coders - including these so-called "POSS" coders - who really don't give a damn about who "owns" a given code snippet. As th

Perhaps one of our resident "IAAL"s can clarify this, but in the absence of an explicit license, doesn't copyright still apply to a code snippet by default? So rejecting the use of the GPL or other FOSS doesn't mean just any corporate asshat can come along and steal your work - Quite the opposite, it means no one can legally use your code.

No, not quite. Copyright licenses can be express or implied. You can't have an implied exclusive license, but implied non exclusive licenses are a dime a dozen. There are also things that aren't covered by copyright at all. For example, if you legally own a copy of someone's software, the copyright on that software doesn't preclude you from modifying it so that it runs on a computer or backing it up.

Still though, I think the original poster would be better served for now by using at least a basic license, a

One very good reason to use a license is its liability disclaimer. If you release your software without one, there is always the danger that some idiot will find a way to use it in such a way as to remove all his files, consequently suing you for damages. With the astronomical costs of litigation in the US, a lawsuit, whether you win it or not, is a financial death sentence. It is worthwhile to take every measure you can to defend yourself from this.

This is denial of service technique #2 that anyone with a little money can use to bankrupt or destroy or at least profit off anyone with less money who posts unlicensed code to github.

Lets say I am a bored unemployed lawyer or somehow have some "edge" where I can prosecute cheaper than the author can defend. All I need is to file a lawsuit blaming the code for something bad, doesn't matter if its true or even likely, that will cost an absolute minimum of $X to defend against. Then offer a pre-trial settle

I don't think you can be liable for damages, if those damages arise from using un-licenced software that the plaintiff copied in violation of copyright law.

No license is NO RIGHT TO USE whatsoever.

Then you would be wrong. Many years ago a burglar broke into my father in law's business, and severed two fingers on a table saw that had its guards removed. He sued over the injury, even though he was trespassing at the time.

The lawyers settled it all out of court, so no precedent was established, but it still cost a ton of money to pay the lawyers and deal with the mess.

The point is "you can always be sued for liability", not "you will win the suit because someone was violating a different law."

If you think your personal making-a-statement against "permission culture" is more important than the practical ability of others (including distributors) to use the code you produce without exposing themselves to legal risk, then you're part of the "permission culture" - you feel entitled to deny others permission to use your work.

If you want to make a responsible statement against "permission culture", release your work into the public domain, and include a one-clause BSD license for use in jurisdictions that don't recognize public domain.

There's an interesting hack you can do against unlicensed / unattributed code. Slap your name on it, now tell github to stop violating your copyright and remove "your" code from their server that someone else stole and uploaded. After all, the original author didn't care enough about his work to put a license on it, so you have a minor moral and ethical permission to take it as yours, after all, its abandonware, and if you no longer want your code distributed on github, well...

I imagine the trial would be hilarious.

"He stole my code and deleted it from my github account""its not the plaintiffs code, the only known licensed version of it in the whole world is from the defendant. The plaintiff himself repeatedly stated the code he was publishing was not licensed, our position is the plaintiff stole the defendant's code, deleted the copyright and license from the headers, and uploaded it to his pirating account, which we shut down""..."

Licensing is all about protecting the creator of the work. It can lay down explicit allowances for the consumer, but make no bones about it, they are not there for you the user. Regardless of how software is licensed there needs to be some protections for the consumer. Things have gotten absolutely ridiculous. How about regulation that enshrines: 1) Separation of hardware and software in all devices. Both from the "bundling" standpoint as well as the right to move software without permission or notification

Read the GitHub EULA [github.com]. They do not currently claim ownership of uploaded content. However, they claim the right to modify the agreement: " GitHub reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice.... GitHub shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, price change, suspension or discontinuance of the Service.

The author mentions that most people think personal use copying is ok.

I would say the same is true of companies, but only for open source, for some reason.

Companies often download open source, modify the software, copy the modified software among hundreds of people, demonstrate the modified software publicly, then say they will release the software when the product is released.

But, there was no copyright or licence that granted the internal copies of the modified software, as the modifications were not publ

like most of us i've self-published a bunch of crap in the past fifteen years or so,ranging from music CDs in actual stores to numerous personal software components,and i've intentionally kept them bare of any licensing information for two reasons:

1. as a small protest against the permission culture.2. i feel that incorporating the permission culture into the creative work cheapens the work.

when folks have re-purposed my work (that i know of), they've always asked first and have always offered to include at

no: i chose to omit licensing. you're choosing to interpret it within the permission framework. congratulations.also i think i made it clear that my omission was made intentionally rather than out of ignorance, so screw you.

if there is no license than someone can take the work, use it for their own product, make money and not give anything back

Nope. If there is no license, then the work is presumed to have full copyright protection. Full copyright is the default, and you need to provide an alternative license if you want people to legally use it in any way.

There's a specific (patent) example I recall from the history of Sweet'N'Low.

Patents on inventions, and copyrights on creative works, work completely differently. If you have no patent, the presumption is that the invention is in the public domain. If you have no registered copyright, the presumption is that all rights are reserved.

There's no way to punish Domino for it, because he held no patent on his packaging method. He relied on it being a trade secret... then gave it away.

More fool him. Packaging is big business. If you have a genuine patented innovation in the field and manage it right, you're on the gravy train until someone supercedes it. It might be small potatoes, but it's a LOT of small potatoes.

It's legal either way, whether it's a giant corporate bastard or a small independent bastard.

Why? Because you never know when someone will take your code, use it, copyright it, then sue you for using the code you wrote yourself in the first place.It has happened before. Just go look up the old AT&T/BSD lawsuits.

I'm not sure how slapping a copyright on it helps you with that, they could still claim to own the original code. having it published on somewhere like github on the other hand might protect you from it(as proof of it being in existence on day x).

of course if you want to put restrictions on it... then you should. but if you're afraid people might use information you give to them for something you don't like, maybe you shouldn't be sharing information in the first place.

That requires putting a copyright notice and the permission notice, and the license is a great deal longer. I see no advantage other than a silly concern for people who believe that some words are nasty or bad.